Video Fun with Multiplexing and Juggling While Hula Hooping

August 10, 2016

Sometimes, it’s fun just to share some videos that you’ve been impressed by over recent months. This month, my article focuses on some videos demonstrating some outstanding accomplishments in two areas – multiplexing and juggling while hula hooping.

Multiplexing

Back in March 2016, Hans Nickmans wrote an excellent eJuggle article on multiplexing which can be found here. In his article, Nickmans provides descriptions, video examples, and diagrams of some of the most common, and some uncommon, multiplex variations. Several tutorials are included as well. This peaked my interest in multiplexing. Personally, I had messed around with four and five ball multiplexing, but that was about it. I started to pay attention to the many juggling videos posted online to identify some of what I have started calling “multiplexing on steroids” – those patterns and tricks that take multiplexing to whole different level (or several levels up from my own abilities in the skill). I thought I would share some of those with you.

Bruce Sarafian was one of the pioneers of multiplexing with large numbers, as demonstrated with this video, Multiplex Madeness Volume II:

Matan Presberg, who gained fame as a six year old who could qualify six balls, and who is also the 2015 IJA Numbers Championships gold medalist in Individual Balls, has several impressive multiplex videos.

Here’s a qualifying run of ten balls stacked with a clean finish:

And here’s a 6 ball sync multiplexing pattern that is unique, but at least within my comprehension!

Click here to see another qualifying run of ten balls stacked by Yosuke Matsumoto:

Jay Gilligan’s video “30” contains many excellent and innovative patterns and tricks, many involving multiplexing, including simultaneous throws of different sizes and colors of rings to create a visually interesting effect. Benjamin Domask described Jay’s video as: Air sculptures… Time based air sculptures… repeatable time-based air sculptures… musically time-based air sculpturing… creating time-based sculptures in the air repeatedly to help visualize music…

Tony Pezzo’s amazing video “Grey Socks” includes a lot of advanced multiplexing, including many variations with mixed prop throws and patterns, and found in the middle third of the video.

Alexander Koblikov is most likely the best known and reigning master of numbers multiplexing. In the following video, he accomplishes a 10 ball multiplex pirouette!

Juggling while Hula Hooping

It was while attending the 2015 Not Quite Pittsburgh Festival that I started noticing different people doing juggling tricks while hula hooping. I’d certainly seen this before, my (at the time) 11 year old daughter Elizabeth can juggle while hooping, but I made some notes to check for videos of impressive tricks combining the two skills.

Bob Nickerson is one of the long time purveyors of this skill. Click here and here to see two of Bob’s hula hoop juggling tricks.

Click here to see Cinthia Buitron, also known as La Flaka, combine a face balance, juggling, and multiple hoop starting.

Kyle Peterson combines juggling with hooping and balancing on a globe with this brief video:

Tony Duncan was the juggler I saw in (not quite) Pittsburgh that inspired me to find other challenging videos, and I have three good examples of the skill featuring Tony.

Here he is with 2 ping pong balls on a paddle while hooping:

Tony juggles five rings while hooping with this one:

Former IJA Champion Tony with five clubs while hooping can be seen here:

Here’s Tony force bouncing three balls through the hoop.

I think it is appropriate to conclude this article with someone who performs both hula hooping with juggling, and advanced multiplexing – the nearly indescribably and unmatched Larry Vee:

Scott Cain is an IJA Life Member, IJA Numbers Championships Co-Director, a former Numbers gold-medalist, Teams medalist as a member of Raising Cain, Musical Theater Critic for Talkin’ Broadway (Cincinnati/Dayton), and assistant curator/researcher for the Historical Juggling Props Museum (www.historicaljugglingprops.com). He and his family live in Cincinnati, Ohio (USA).

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